


Out by the Root

by Sheliak



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22426714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheliak/pseuds/Sheliak
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Nara Shikamaru, Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Shisui
Comments: 7
Kudos: 281
Collections: Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2019





	Out by the Root

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moon_Blitz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moon_Blitz/gifts).



They went back together. The seal could take two; by the end, they were the only choices left. 

They agreed that Sakura would take the lead: the amount of chakra fed to the seal would determine how far back their minds traveled, so her control was vital.

Too early, and their bodies wouldn’t be able to take the chakra imbalance; too late, and their minds wouldn’t be able to take root. ( _Root,_ ugh.) And if the allocation was uneven, they could end up in different times—even different branches of time. None of that was acceptable. 

So while Sakura worked on the mechanics of their last resort, Shikamaru focused on strategy. He studied history, poured over old classified records from their childhood and newer ones, records of conversations allied shinobi had had with the zombie army. 

Finally, they were both done. They said their goodbyes—to the few people they had left to say goodbye to—and Sakura triggered the seal.

* * *

They set out together, they would land in the same place— but they made the journey alone. 

As she fell through time, Sakura was alone, alone in time and body and her mind. 

She was five years old and she was twenty, a soldier and a child training to someday be one. 

She was rage uncontrolled and rage focused and directed. 

She was two and she was one. She was Haruno Sakura, within and without. 

And she had a _lot_ of work to do.

* * *

Sakura and Shikamaru hadn’t been friends, at this age. But they were already in the same class at the Academy. It wasn’t hard for them to meet, though it was a bit harder to talk alone. 

(They didn’t want to bring Ino and Chouji into this; not yet. Their friends and teammates were still children, truly children, and they shouldn’t take this kind of risk. Not yet. Not while there was another option.)

They’d landed three years before the Uchiha Massacre. That was their first target, they agreed, trying to treat this like a mission. 

The massacre had weakened the village, and strengthened Danzou and Root. It could not be allowed to happen. 

Unfortunately, they were due to be eight when it happened. They still had their brains and their knowledge, but neither one had the skill or the chakra or the _connections_ they’d need to fix things themselves. 

Sakura didn’t waste too much time daydreaming about how they’d handle this in their real bodies. But she did think of it, sometimes, wistfully. Between Shikamaru’s shadows and her strength, his strategy and her skill at unraveling genjutsu, they’d have been able to assassinate Danzou easily.

No point in dwelling on that. 

Here and now they were two children, one a clan head’s son and the other as anonymous as anyone in their age range could get, with the knowledge of the future and the ruthlessness of trained shinobi who’d watched their world burn for Danzou’s hubris. 

Sakura’s child-self already had already had a puppy crush on Sasuke. Use that. She had an excuse for hanging around him, and therefore an excuse to hang around the Uchiha. Her parents weren’t politically cued in enough to tell her how dangerous that was; they knew she was training to be a ninja and expected her to handle herself. She had the freedom to do this. 

And Shikamaru had connections, even at his age. Not enough to just go to the Hokage and fix this, not like in their time. But he could make his father listen, and from there… they could deploy the whole Ino-Shika-Chou if they needed to. (They would need to.)

Based on his studies, Shikamaru suggested a target to speak to—an Uchiha prodigy who was well-disposed to the rest of the village, flexible and desperate enough to consider taking their offer.

* * *

It had to be Sakura who made contact, of course. They might be counting on the Ino-Shika-Chou alliance, but they couldn’t afford to link the alliance to the Uchiha. Not just yet, anyway. So it couldn’t be Shikamaru who spoke to him.

Here and now, Sakura was nobody. Which was exactly what she had to be, to do this. 

Fortunately, she knew what to say, which names to invoke. Shikamaru had taken point on the historical research side of things—and Naruto had said some things too, before the end. She had a pretty good idea of how to get through to Uchiha Shisui.

It had to be him, too. (Technically, Itachi was also an option. But this started with Shisui—and he was the more stable of the two. He was also the one who hadn’t personally wrecked her teammate’s life. Shisui it was.)

And so, one day when she’d bumped into him after supposedly going to give Sasuke some unwanted chocolates, Sakura smiled up at him and said, “Some weeds must be pulled out by the _root_.” 

Shisui’s eyes widened. (Reflexively, Sakura flexed her chakra to ward off genjutsu.) But what he said was, “The roots go very deep.” 

_Got you._

“You can still protect both your clan and the village,” Sakura said. “It’s not quite too late. And you’re not actually alone.”

It took more than that to convince him, of course. But in the end they did.

Sakura had a third teammate, now. And they had a second mission objective, too. Because she and Shikamaru were _definitely_ not going to let him down.

* * *

Sakura did have a technique that she could use in battle now, without injuring herself. Well, she almost had it. 

Fingers of Death was Shizune’s technique—one she’d never managed to get battle-ready. It required a level of control and concentration that Tsunade’s first apprentice didn’t have. But she’d passed it on to Sakura, and Sakura’s control was second to none. 

Of course, she couldn’t exactly practice it here and now. She could restart hearts she stopped, sure. But no one was going to let a kid her age practice that kind of jutsu on them—well, no one except Shikamaru, maybe. But even if he was a jounin in mind and spirit and knew the risks, she didn’t want to give his tiny body a heart attack. It could cause too many complications later on. (Not to mention his parents would never let him hang out with her again!) 

She mentioned that, eventually, some months into their alliance. (Months they didn't have, memory told her: the massacre was ticking ever closer. )

“Practice on me,” Shisui said easily. 

Sakura kept her eyes from narrowing with the ease of a Hokage’s apprentice. But she knew what he was doing. 

He was giving her a chance she needed, sure. But he was also ensuring that if anything went really wrong, she’d be on the hook with the Uchiha for it. They’d blow her cover sky-high, although there was a chance they wouldn’t get Shikamaru too. 

And of course, there was also the usual risk with practicing jutsu on an Uchiha, even a teammate: they might just copy it. Even if Shisui didn’t have the control to pull it off, and he probably didn’t, he could pass it on to someone in the clan who did. Hypothetically speaking. 

Still. She needed to practice. (And they needed to practice trusting each other, too, if any of this was going to work.) 

“Sure.” And because she was a medic of Konoha—and that _mattered,_ even if she hadn’t taken the relevant oaths yet—she launched into Shizune’s old explanation of the pitfalls of the technique, what meant something was going wrong, and what to do if it did. 

(Her teammate was taking a risk. But she could arm him to face it as well as he could.)

* * *

When Danzou and his men came to ambush Shisui—just when and where Shikamaru had known they would—they were ready. Sakura and Shikamaru were waiting, chakra pulled tight, hidden by stealth techniques and a subtle genjutsu of Shisui’s. They’d only have one chance at this. 

Shikamaru’s shadow—far stronger than it should have been at his age, with the weight of years of skill and years of yin chakra growth— lashed out to grab Danzou’s followers. He let the man himself be. Reasonable: they’d expected that Danzou would be able to break it. 

And Danzou had forgotten how to be a teammate a long time ago. He didn’t care when the others went frozen and stiff; didn’t react to free them. That, in itself, was damning. 

There was no worse sin for a Konoha shinobi than to take one’s comrades’ lives for granted. 

Sakura, who’d been practicing for this, did what she had to. She clenched the Fingers of Death around Danzou’s heart, and he fell. 

It was simple in a way that told her, yet again, why most medic-ninja kept their combat and healing work as separate as possible. (Even Tsunade had focused her innovations on her own body, not her enemies’.) But here and now, Sakura didn’t have that luxury. 

She’d planned to kill him; the first blow wasn’t enough, but she still had her hand on his heart. 

But something had changed: she felt chakra she hadn’t known to count on, heard more breath than their two sides accounted for. And so she changed the plan. 

An extra twist of chakra let Danzou stagger to his feet—and fall again to Nara Shikaku’s Shadow Stitching. 

It was a shockingly quick end to the monster who’d dominated the last three years of Sakura’s life, who in her time had fought such a devastating last battle. (A clan’s worth of doujutsu had made a great difference to his strength, it seemed.) 

Sakura took a moment to lean into Shikamaru’s dad’s chakra, strong and encompassing like the night itself. It could hide his teammates' presence from a better sensor than her; might be able to hide an army. His strength was comforting, just now. (Even if they'd have managed without him.)

(She took a moment, too, to appreciate that his attack had completely masked hers: no one would be able to tell that she’d used a subtle jutsu on Danzou’s heart, after it had been struck through by Shadow Stitching. Her secrets would stand, just a little longer.)

Of course, there was no keeping their presence there secret. Shikamaru hadn’t actually told his dad what was going on, but he’d let enough slip that Shikaku and his teammates had followed him. 

So Sakura told them she’d been worried about her tutor—which was true enough—and Shikamaru said he’d been worried about his friend. 

Shikaku had been worried about his son, of course. But he was also glad that they were being good teammates already. “Next time, tell us.” 

They promised to do so—and both of them meant it.

* * *

Later, Shisui sought her out. “Sparing those ninja… Was that mercy or arrogance?”

Ah: was she unwilling to kill those men, or simply too secure in her skills to think she had to? 

“I would have killed them if I needed to. I didn’t need to.” She smiled sunnily, like the child she wasn’t. 

They were Root ninja: enemies and victims. Killing them had always been a valid option; it just hadn’t been the only option. 

She’d had her Fingers of Death on their hearts too, the whole time. 

But they were alive, and the Yamanaka clan seemed to want to help them. (That wasn't even classified; Ino had been talking about it. It was a clan project, but hardly a secret.) They hadn’t known they were traitors, after all. Sakura was happy with that ending, insofar as it was one.

“Both and neither, then.” He laughed. “Would you like an apprenticeship?”

This time, there was no calculation behind her reply.

* * *

Over the next few days, the Nara and Yamanaka clans spearheaded an investigation into Root. Shikamaru heard a little of that, and passed what he could on to Sakura.

Everyone else took the opportunity to blame Danzou for everything that had gone wrong. That, Sakura heard firsthand—from her parents, even from people on the street. She was tempted to join them—not that she could admit to knowing any of the things she blamed him for. 

A _lot_ could be blamed on Danzou. It might even be enough to convince the Uchiha. 

If it wasn’t… Shisui had his eyes, both of them; Sakura and Shikamaru had their knowledge. There were ways to deal with this, short of revolution, short of a massacre. 

For now, the Uchiha seemed to be bonding with their neighbors over finally having the same person to blame for their misfortunes. Sakura hoped that could continue.

* * *

One day Shikamaru said, “My father thinks the Third might retire.” 

“ _Good,_ ” Sakura said in a fierce whisper. If the Third retired, that would help. (It would especially help with the Uchiha.) His ruthlessness had failed when it came to an old teammate—well, Sakura could understand that. (She’d been guilty of the same, in her time.) But it wasn’t an acceptable mistake for a kage, and he had to know that.

And the Third was old. Old, and shaken in a way _their_ Third had never been. Sakura thought that he’d do it. 

The question was who the Fifth would be, this time around. 

Tsunade wasn’t in the village, and wouldn’t come back for anyone the Third might think of sending. Kakashi wasn’t ready; the Uchiha prodigies were, well, Uchiha. Shikamaru’s dad didn’t have a kage-level reputation, although if you counted in his teammates his skills came pretty close. Jiraiya… Jiraiya might take the Hat for a year or two, if he knew there was someone he could pawn it off on after that.

(“Someone” might be Tsunade, or it might be Kakashi or even Shisui. As long as it wasn’t Danzou, Sakura thought she could live with it.) 

“I think I’ll ask Shisui if we can go on a training trip,” she said. 

Shikamaru, of course, understood what she meant. “I won’t have an excuse to go with you,” he said. (Which was high praise, from someone as lazy as him.) “But you’re the best choice for that stage of the mission anyway.” 

Sakura would like to see her first master again—and she had some things to say that Tsunade needed to hear, and knew how to say them so that she’d listen. 

Even if she wouldn’t take the hat—things would be better, if she came back. 

After all, their mission wasn’t over.


End file.
